i am learning to love with isenheim altarpiece hands.
i'll lie down infinitely low, and spread my palms as wide as i can,
ready for the nails, or porcelain crowns in my chocked-open mouth,
the sweetest sound of breath rushing between my new gap-teeth,
reconstruct me

because i know just what i want but i just don't want it!
a boldface caps-locked sans serif italic romance!
...but now that i am so so close to the actual Thing, my little a, the ecstatic motion of our now-bare feet, i turn away

...but the motion returned! i could feel it twirling and bouncing, boring a hole through me
when i was set free, river-jordan-clean, on east ninth street at 5am,
the vision was clear: glimmering transcendence shone through claw marks on my chest,
i escaped the quicksand transience

oh! o! my soul, its a battle,
now that true love's very signifiers won't loosen their hold—
the scent of bayberry candle and pine,
ceramic heating, dry skin, cool coffee, and the ghosts of my life,
somewhere someone's sitting with me in my head, if and when i come to mind how will you reconstruct me?

underneath adam’s garmet rest the sore and stubborn mechanics; the naked truth
that honest bodies are only images unless you are inside either of them, hallelu-
to those who have seen my unformed limbs, and to those who have recorded them, what will i have to offer you?

and what will i have to offer those people that i have lost in 2019, 2020, and 2021 and 2022 and 2023?
and those i never had in between, call me, touch me,
and see that my skin still stops you when you stick your finger between my ribs and sing along after, you thomases! groove with me your bony hips across our disjointed matricies! wine-chalked lips, a movie kiss, and i am vomiting two liters of green kratom powder, diet tonic, and seagram’s gin,
and i’ll admit, i am not living anything close to the life i had dreamt at 18 by crumb or stony creek, in in the sunny-golden cinema of romance and barren trees—i was conceited! i’ve been deceived! my own great expectations were the near-death of me! then came the blood-stained sheets, the two fake teeth, two days, five weeks, three ghosts, but the indefatigable stream, to whom i still think i sing
yes i know! i am constantly still coming to—i have been singing about spring since i hardly knew what the winter would really look like, but now i think i do, now that
the motion’s returned! i can feel it bouncing and twirling, boring a hole through me,
i have been set free, river jordan-clean, on east ninth street, at 5am
the vision was clear: glimmers of transcendence in the claw marks down my neck
i escaped the quicksand transcience